Category Archives: Slow Recovery

Today is the first day of the fall quarter at Stanford, and I begin teaching Economics 1, the introductory economics course, and the course after which this blog is named. The first day is always exciting, especially with many first-year … Continue reading →

Joe Stiglitz recently published an attack, “The Myth of Secular Stagnation,” on Larry Summers’ hypothesis of secular stagnation, a revival of a term used by Alvin Hansen decades ago. Larry first presented his secular stagnation hypothesis at a conference jointly … Continue reading →

The Great Recession began exactly one decade ago this month, as later determined by the NBER business cycle dating committee chaired by my colleague, Bob Hall. There is still a great debate about the causes of the Great Recession, its … Continue reading →

“Growth Conundrum” sets the theme for the many fascinating articles in the latest issue of the IMF’s quarterly magazine Finance and Development which includes an opening essay by Nicholas Crafts and a profile of Kristin Forbes. I was asked to write … Continue reading →

During the past two days, economists from around the world gathered at the Hoover Institution to focus on the crucial problem of how to restore prosperity. They took stock of lessons from past experiences in the US and Europe, and … Continue reading →

In his Saturday Wall Street Journal essay “Why the Economy Doesn’t Roar Anymore”—illustrated with a big lion with its mouth shut—Marc Levinson offers the answer that the “U.S. economy isn’t behaving badly. It is just being ordinary.” But there is … Continue reading →

The data released this week on labor productivity growth are really terrible. The growth rate has been negative now for three quarters in a row, and it was – .4 percent over the past year. Unfortunately, these data are reinforcing … Continue reading →